WITHIN there was a gravel path, and glimpses between trees of wide
pleasure-grounds. Amaryllis hesitated, and looked back; Iden drew her
forward, not noticing her evident disinclination to proceed. If he had,
he would have put it down to awe, instead of which it was dislike.
For she guessed they were entering the lawns in front of the Hon.
Raleigh Pamment's mansion. He was the largest owner of town and country;
the streets, the market-place, the open spaces, in which the fair was
being held, belonged to him; so did most of the farms and hamlets out of
which the people had come. The Pamments were Tories; very important
Tories indeed.
The Idens, in their little way, were Tories, too, right to the centre of
the cerebellum; the Flammas were hot Republicans. Now Amaryllis, being a
girl, naturally loved her father most, yet she was a wilful and
rebellious revolutionist. Amaryllis, who would not be a Flamma, had
imbibed all the Flamma hatred of authority from her mother.
To her the Pamments were the incarnation of everything detestable, of
oppression, obstruction, and mediæval darkness. She knew nothing of
politics; at sixteen you do not need to know to feel vehemently, you
feel vehemently without knowing. Still, she had heard a good deal about
the Pamments.
She resented being brought there to admire the pleasure grounds and
mansion, and to kow-tow to the grandeur of these mediæval tyrants.
Old Iden led her on till they came to the smooth lawn before the front
windows; three centuries of mowing had made it as smooth as the top of
his own head, where the years had mown away merrily.
There was not so much as a shrub--not a daisy--between them and the
great windows of the house. They stood in full view.
Amaryllis could scarcely endure herself, so keen was her vexation; her
cheeks reddened. She was obliged to face the house, but her glance was
downwards; she would not look at it.
Grandfather Iden was in the height of his glory. In all Woolhorton town
there was not another man who could do as he was doing at that moment.
The Pamments were very exclusive people, exceptionally exclusive even
for high class Tories. Their gardens, and lawns, and grounds were
jealously surrounded with walls higher than the old-fashioned houses of
the street beneath them. No one dared to so much as peer through a
crevice of the mighty gates. Their persons were encircled with the
"divinity" that hedges the omnipotent landed proprietor. No one dared
speak to a Pamment. They acknowledged no one in the town, not even the
solicitors, not even the clergyman of the Abbey church; that was on
account of ritual differences.
It was, indeed, whispered--high treason must always be whispered--that
young Pamment, the son and heir, was by no means so exclusive, and had
been known to be effusive towards ladies of low birth--and manners.
The great leaders of Greece--Alcibiades, Aristides, and so on--threw
open their orchards to the people. Everyone walked in and did as he
chose. These great leaders of England--the Pamments--shut up their lawns
and pleasure-grounds, sealed them hermetically, you could hardly throw a
stone over the walls if you tried.
But Grandfather Iden walked through those walls as if there were none;
he alone of all Woolhorton town and country.
In that gossipy little town, of course, there were endless surmises as
to the why and wherefore of that private key. Shrewd people said--"Ah!
you may depend they be getting summat out of him. Lent 'em some of his
guineas, a' reckon. They be getting summat out of him. Hoss-leeches,
they gentlefolks."
Grandfather Iden alone entered when he listed: he wandered about the
lawns, he looked in at the conservatories, he took a bunch of grapes if
it pleased him, or a bouquet of flowers; he actually stepped indoors
occasionally and sat down on the carved old chairs, or pottered about
the picture gallery. He had a private key to the nail-studded door in
the wall by the Abbey church, and he looked upon that key very much as
if it had been the key of Paradise.
When Grandfather Iden stood on the lawn at Pamment House he was the
proudest and happiest man in what they sarcastically call "God's
creation."
He was a peer at such moments; a grandee--the grandee who can wear his
hat or sit down (which is it? it is most important to be accurate) in
the presence of his deity, I mean his sovereign; he could actually step
on the same sward pressed by the holy toes of the Pamments.
In justice to him it must be said that he was most careful not to
obtrude himself into the sight of their sacred majesties. If they were
at home he rarely went in, if he did he crept round unfrequented paths,
the byeways of the gardens, and hid himself under the fig trees, as it
were. But if by chance a Pamment did light upon him, it was noteworthy
that he was literally dandled and fondled like an infant, begged to come
in, and take wine, and so so, and so so.
In justice to old Iden let it be known that he was most careful not to
obtrude himself; he hid himself under the fig trees.
Hardly credible is it? that a man of ninety years--a man of no common
intelligence--a man of books, and coins, and antiquities, should, in
this nineteenth century, bend his aged knees in such a worship.
Incredible as it may seem it is certainly true.
Such loyalty in others of old time, remember, seems very beautiful when
we read of the devotion that was shown towards Charles Stuart.
With all his heart and soul he worshipped the very ground the Pamments
trod on. He loved to see them in the Abbey church; when they were at
home he never failed to attend service, rain, snow, thunder, ninety
years notwithstanding, he always attended that he might bow his
venerable head to them as they swept up the aisle, receiving the
faintest, yet most gracious, smile of recognition in return.
He was quite happy in his pew if he could see them at their carved desks
in the chancel; the organ sounded very beautiful then; the light came
sweetly through the painted windows; a sanctity and heavenly presence
was diffused around.
Rebellious Amaryllis knew all this, and hated it. Her Flamma foot tapped
the sacred sward.
Grandfather Iden, after mopping his mouth with his silk handkerchief,
began to point with his cudgel--a big hockey stick--at the various parts
of the building. This was Elizabethan, that dated from James II., that
went back to Henry VII., there were walls and foundations far more
ancient still, out of sight.
Really, it was a very interesting place archæologically, if only you
could have got rid of the Pamments.
Amaryllis made no remark during this mumbling history. Iden thought she
was listening intently. At the conclusion he was just moving her--for
she was passive now, like a piece of furniture--when he spied some one
at a window.
Off came the great white hat, and down it swept till the top brushed the
grass in the depth of his homage. It was a bow that would have delighted
a lady, so evidently real in its intent, so full of the gentleman, so
thoroughly courtier-like, and yet honest. There was nothing to smile at
in that bow; there was not a young gentleman in Belgravia who could bow
in that way, for, in truth, we have forgotten how to bow in this
generation.
A writing and talking is always going on about the high place woman
occupies in modern society, but the fact is, we have lost our reverence
for woman as woman; it is after-dinner speech, nothing more, mere sham.
We don't venerate woman, and therefore we don't bow.
Grandfather Iden's bow would have won any woman's heart had it been
addressed to her, for there was veneration and courtesy, breeding, and
desire to please in it.
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